


A Eulogy for The Old Gods

by Tangerine_Catnip



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dialogue Heavy, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Human Outsider (Dishonored), Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 12:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12481980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tangerine_Catnip/pseuds/Tangerine_Catnip
Summary: Billie Lurk and her unusual companion sit on a rooftop and talk of things long past and a few that are yet to come.





	A Eulogy for The Old Gods

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to try something a little experimental, cus why not.

"You know, I used to think the stars were just another story that people tell children, like how eating sprouts will make you grow faster, or that The Outsider would snatch you up if you misbehaved."

Billie crossed her left arm behind her head as she lay back on the copper-coloured roof shingles. In the heat of the day, you could cook an egg on most rooftops in Karnaca, but here in the earliest hours of the morning, they offered a comfortable resting spot to those who didn't fear heights.

"What did they say I'd do to you once I snatched you up?" The man lying beside her asked.

"Uhhh… cook us alive, I think. There was something about boiling off our flesh and craving inscriptions into our bones."

"How gruesome. I suppose I have Vera to thank for that. The ones I marked always seemed to have a surprising amount of influence over how I was perceived."

Billie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, imagine that? People judging you for giving power to unstable outcasts. How inconsiderate of them. Maybe they just missed the memo where you explained that you were only running a social experiment to see if human nature could handle having power but not abusing it."

She earned a soft chuckle from her companion for that remark. Meanwhile, a soft breeze rustled the leaves of a tree that backed up beside the apartment complex who's roof they were occupying.

It had grown so tall, and its trunk was so thick, that it probably predated the building itself. It had survived the initial clearing and watched as the whole landscape changed to suit the needs of the humans who had settled around it.

"Anyway, the first time I ever saw the stars was when I was leaving Dunwall after Daud spared my life. Once the cargo ship breached the layer of smog covering the city, I looked up, and there they were. Like they had just been waiting for me the entire time. Then and there, I swore I'd take the time to learn more about them. I even got a few of the sailors on the boat to teach me how to use the east star for navigation, but that's about as far as I ended up going. Turns out, it's hard to stop and think about tiny pinpricks of light in the sky when you're worried about scraping together enough to survive down here."

Billie couldn't remember the last time she had just stopped and looked at the sky. It had probably been years. Like her little gutter friends, Billie tended to spend her life scurrying about with her nose in something.

"Would you still like to learn more?"

The question caught her off guard. Usually, at this point in the conversation, the other person would agree there was nothing to be gained by staring off into the sky. Then again, she wasn't talking to one of the usual shady characters that made up her social circle. Shady perhaps, but decidedly not usual.

"Are you offering?"

"I was taught the constellations once upon a time. The Eyeless thought it might be useful if their new god was familiar with the myths and legends surrounding his predecessors."

Billie knew that there were stories attached to the malformed pictograms ancient philosophers had imposed upon the chaotic jumble of the stars, but she had never really given it much thought beyond rolling her eyes when she heard about how easily nobles could be parted from their coin, if they were told that the secrets of the future could be gleaned from them.

But if he was expressing an interest, then there might be some kernel of truth under it that only he would have been able to parse.

"Predecessors? You mean the old gods?"

"Yes. They were worshipped in great temples that would have made the grandest palaces and estates of the empire look like ramshackle outhouses. When I was born, though, there was nothing left of them but the stories and the ruins."

It was hard for Billie to imagine a world before The Outsider, one that knew a completely different set of gods. But considering that she had a shard of one where her eye used to be, maybe she should try to be a little more open-minded.

"Why don't you point a few out for me?"

"Alright. You'll have to forgive me if it's a little rough. My knowledge of the stars is a few thousand years out of date."

"So? The stars don't move."

"Yes, but they can die. No light in the universe shines forever."

He lifted his hand and shifted a little closer to her, so he could better judge her eyeline in comparison to his. "We can start with the one you're most familiar with. Do you see that star there?'

Billie looked where he was pointing, although with only one finger and countless starts it was a bit like trying to get a grip on a greased-up snake.

"Connect it with that star, and it makes an arm. Then those four are the body, that one is the head, and two more for the legs."

Billie squinted up at the sky, but it didn't help at all. "What?"

"He's got his arms crossed over his chest, so the stars kind of overlap."

Billie huffed. This was sounding more and more like nonsense, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. "Right… I guess I'm kind of seeing it."

She was lying, but also really wanted to get on with it.

"That's Omous. Patron of wisdom and knowledge and creator of the Void."

"He created the Void?"

"That's what the legend says."

Billie pushed herself up onto her elbow.

"You don't know?"

"I know that there was a god who existed in the Void before my time, and that its eye still connects the two realms, but I have no idea whether the stories that were told about them centuries after their demise are true."

Billie nodded and slumped back down. "Right, sorry. I guess I forgot that these were just stories."

Billie knew she couldn't expect him to still have all the answers of an omnipotent being, but he still knew more then any normal man should, and it was hard to tell if he would be able to explain something to her or not. At least he tried to answer all her questions now instead of standing around sullenly, waiting for a chance to lecture her again.

"So, if he created the Void, then who made where we are right now?"

"There's another figure in the stars next to him. Let me trace her for you."

Billie tried to follow, and she barely made out a very crude stick figure of a human on its knees.

"Gigi. Wife and sister to Omous."

"Wife and sister?

"It wasn't much more acceptable in my day than yours. Gods get a pass, I suppose? No one really questioned it."

Billie frowned up at the stars as if she might be able to shame them if she did it hard enough.

"Despite their close bond, Gigi and Omous couldn't have been more different, and that was reflected in their realms. Her world, Terra, was bursting at the seams with her creations. All co-depended and working in perfect harmony like clockwork. Meanwhile, the Void was a dark and empty place, with only hard stone and air. In Terra life grew, changed, and died. In the Void, things were static, never dying and never changing."

Billie had never really thought of her world as being a cohesive realm in the same way the Void was. It felt more like the civilised world was the calm in the eye of a hurricane, fending off the Void with one hand and savages from distant lands with the other.

"As time passed, Omous let his gaze linger for longer and longer on what his wife had created, since it was so colourful and vibrant compared to his own, and eventually his envy changed the nature of the Void itself. Omous began copying pieces of Terra and hiding them away in the Void, until eventually, the whole Void was a mirror of her creation."

Billie snorted. She had met men like that. Some things never changed.

"At first, Gigi was upset that her work was being stolen, but she still felt sympathetic to her husband and agreed to help him make a creature of his very own."

"Let me guess. The whales?"

"Leviathans."

Billie rolled her eyes, even though the gesture went unnoticed by the man lying beside her. "Yeah, them."

"Gigi gave them form and function and Omous sculpted their minds and filled their veins with lightning. But what neither had expected was that their collaboration would result in the Leviathan's existing in both their realms at once. Outraged that he couldn't even have this one creation to himself, Omous struck out at Gigi, killing her instantly.

"Seriously? What an asshole."

The man beside her nodded in agreement. "Fortunately, because the world Gigi had built was so deeply connected to itself, Terra didn't die with her. It survived past her death with none of its creatures fully aware of what they had lost."

Billie looked back up at the stars, trying to put flesh and clothing on the barest outline she could see. The only mother she had ever known had been nothing short of a terror. A monster lurking in the kitchen with an unpredictable temper and a rolling pin in her hand.

When she had been younger and stupider, Billie had used to imagine that she had been kidnapped at birth, and that her real mother was out there somewhere looking for her. The image she had of Gigi in her head right now looked a lot like how she had pictured her lost mother. Shame Gigi was long dead. It explained why everything was so shitty, though.

"Afterward, Omous became so wracked with guilt that the Void fractured and began actively preying on our world. That's when it first crept into the minds of men and woman, and the strengthened connection allowed them to break away from the simple instincts of the beasts and begin building civilisations."

"What was everyone doing before then?"

"Eating and procreating, like most animals."

"Hmm, sounds nice."

Billie thought she might have been a decent hunter in another lifetime. After all, she had made a good enough living taking down the fattened oxen of society.

"Yes, well, welcome or not, that knowledge and insight also came with a steep price. From then to forever, the Void would touch the dreams of humans, and syphon away the souls of the dead."

"And what happened to the Dick-face Void god?"

"Omous carried on for a time, but every day his broken heart grew colder and colder until it turned to stone. It spread to his lungs, then to his limbs, and eventually, everything but his one eye was cold and empty."

Well, that explained how Billie had found a piece of him buried under a mountain.

"So, I've got a piece of some asshole who beat his wife to death in my face?"

The man beside her fell silent for a moment.

"That's… one way to look at it. Another is that, like the Leviathans, you are a creature of Gigi who's been shaped and changed by Omous. It's what the eyeless tried to do with me. They chose a street kid because they thought it was the closest they could get to the wild, unfettered existence humanity had before the fracture of the Void and the rise of civilisation; a pure creation of Gigi. Then they taught me science, medicine, and math, every human pursuit attributed to Omous, and brought me to the Void to put me under a knife with two blades. One for each god."

"And that worked?"

"Something worked, I'm sure we can both attest to that."

The silence stretched between them for a while after that. Billie didn't quite know how to feel about it all. Should she be sad? How could she be, when she'd had no idea either of them had ever existed? Still, the world did feel a little emptier now, like there had once been something at the centre of it all and now there was nothing but empty space.

"So that's it then? Both our creators are dead, and we're just left with nothing?"

Her companion took a moment to answer her. He sat up, shifting his focus from the stars above to the city around them. The buildings started where land and sea met, then climbed up the mountains like barnacles clinging to a rock.

"It hardly looks like nothing to me."

Billie gritted her teeth and sat up as well.

"No, I mean. What's the point of it all then? If nothing matters and no one cares?"

"What do you want the point to be?"

Answering her questions with more questions. Bloody typical. Billie had no idea why she bothered. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them to her chest.

"Does the thought of an uncaring universe bother you?"

Billie was annoyed with him, so she didn't reply. Down on the dark streets below an owl swooped from a tree, catching a fat white rat in its talons before climbing back up into the sky.

"That thought scared the eyeless, so they decided to solve the problem by making a new god. They thought The Outsider would reign forever, that I would hold back the dark and the empty for an eternity. Then you came and proved them wrong. But even if you had laid down your knife, another would have sought it out and come for me in your place. Maybe this time with less altruistic results. Nothing lasts forever. Omous and Gigi didn't, The Outsider didn't, Deirdre didn't, Daud didn't, the Dreadful Whale didn't, and this world won't. But there's always a reason to keep going, no matter how hopeless it seems, and how many times we have to let go of the things and people we love."

Billie remained stubbornly silent. The last thing she needed was the avatar of the Void giving her life advice. What did he know about loss? He'd never cared for anyone enough to miss them.

"Would you like to know what I live for?"

She wanted to ignore the question, but in a battle between her stubbornness and her curiosity, her hunger for information won out.

"Fine. What?"

He shifted onto his knees and moved a little to the right so that he was facing her. He folded his hands in his lap and looked her in the eyes.

"You."

Billie didn't reply, but she did make noise that could roughly be transcribed as 'hurk.'

Her first instinct was to scream curses at him and call him a liar. She had met plenty of men who had tried to lure her in with worthless promises, and each had been rebuffed with a slap to the face if they were lucky, or a knife to the back if they weren't.

The look in his pale green eyes made her pause, though. When there had been nothing but dark mirror there, she couldn't have imagined him looking anything close to innocent, but there was no other way to describe how he was looking at her now. Billie swallowed and shook her head.

"No."

"No as in you don't believe me, or no you won't accept it?"

"You've only been alive for a few months, you don't know what you want."

He raised his eyebrows at her, then sighed and shook his head.

"Whether you'll take my word for it or not; thank you for being one of the things that make life worth living."

He dropped back down onto the roof, settling back into place like it was the easiest thing in the world.

"Do you want to hear another story?"

Billie seriously considered punching him in the face. He was clearly doing this on purpose, but that also didn't mean it wasn't genuine. That's the way his mind worked, he delighted in making you doubt and question, only to lead you back to the most obvious answer.

She lay back down on the roof as well, pushing what had just transpired into the back of her mind to deal with later.

"Alright, shoot."

"See that group?"

He pointed to a cluster of very bright stars in a rough line.

"That's the belt of Angus."

Billie squinted at the constellation. Clearly, someone had wanted to knock off work early the day they were creating that one.

"Seriously?"

"There's more. Angus is wearing his belt. He's a wolf, those four are his paws, and there's two more for his head and tail."

"Sure… Why is a wolf wearing a belt?"

"The better question is; Why is a wolf wearing a chastity belt?"

Billie let that hang for a moment. She could still get up and walk away, she still had that option.

"Okay, fine. Why is a wolf wearing a chastity belt?"

"Angus was a shapeshifter, and an outcast among the gods."

"Wait… there were more then Omous and Gigi?

"Not in their mythological tradition, Angus is part of a pantheon hailing from the landmass we now call Tyvia and predates the 'two gods, two worlds' myth by another three centuries."

Billie groaned and rubbed her face with both hands. Somewhere along the line, she'd forgotten that these were stories… again. The myth had covered the bases so well, filling in where there had been nothing but mystery before. She had wanted to believe it, so she had.

"Do you still want to hear why he's wearing the chastity belt?"

"Mhmmmmhm…"

Billie didn't trust herself to speak, so she let the sound do it for her.

"Angus was known among the other gods as a trickster and an enabler. Wherever there was discontent or a course of action that required careful consideration, he would arrive to throw whale oil on the problem until it exploded. As you can imagine, this didn't make him very popular among the gods, however, time and time again, he managed to redirect just enough blame to escape punishment."

"Sounds pretty familiar, are you sure you didn't belong to that pantheon?"

"Nothing I know connects Angus to the Void, but maybe he was something of an inspiration."

He shrugged his shoulders. Either ignoring or missing her sarcasm.

"One of Angus's more interesting habits involved taking on the form of animals and mating with them."

"Ugh. Why?"

"I suppose being all-powerful and eternal gets boring after a while."

"Not that you would know, right?"

He laughed and continued with his story.

"At first the results of these unions were benign. Woman with fish tales where their feet would be, men as hairy and strong as oxen, one or two children with Owl wings. But then Angus's taste suddenly changed, and soon there were packs of vicious wolves that walked on two legs roaming the frozen countryside, and preying on the farmers and their families. The peasants begged the gods to help them, and seeing an opportunity to get back at the one who tricked and misled them, the gods agreed."

"So, a chastity belt?"

"That's skipping over how it was forged in a volcano by the master smith Alfaro, and made from a very rare form of amber with magic-dispelling properties, but, yes."

Frankly, Billie was perfectly fine skipping over that part of the story.

"Well, he clearly deserved it."

Billie glanced up at the moon, it was a fair bit past the midpoint and was making its way back down towards the horizon.

Neither of them stuck to anything close to a schedule, but if they stayed out much longer, it would make getting down from this rooftop rather traitorous.

But before she could even suggest leaving, she needed to say her peace. Listening to him talk had calmed Billie back down and given her time to reconsider. She had learned the hard way that she couldn't let her feelings fester, or assume she was going to pluck up the courage later. It was now or never.

"Hey uh… thanks for saying that… stuff before. I'm sorry I snapped at you. You know I'm not good with… well, people in general."

Billie took a deep breath. Reminding herself again that this was for her own good.

"Now that's Daud's… gone… it's nice to not be alone again."

He sat up and leaned over her, that stupid smug smile plastered over his lips.

"That wasn't so painful, was it?"

"Shut up."

"I love you too."

Billie narrowed her eye at him. Two could play this game… whatever this game even was.

She reached up with her right hand, threading her Void-blackened fingers into the front of his jacket, and pulling him into a kiss.

Billie nearly always kissed her romantic interests first, so she knew to wait out the first moments of awkwardness until her partner either settled into it or moved away.

This time fell firmly into the former category. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her whole upper body up to deepen the kiss.

They parted with a soft smack of lips, and Billie found herself staring into his eyes again.

Her heart did a little fluttery thing, much to Billie's complete consternation. She didn't do fluttery things, no part of her did fluttery things.

She sat up, keeping her hold on him, so he didn't get tossed aside by her sudden movement.

"Unless we're planning to sleep up here, we should get going."

He nodded and they both stood up, Billie took his hand in hers just like she always did when she helped lead him down off the rooftop, though Something about it felt different this time.

"You know a lot of myths?"

"A fair few."

"Good. We should do this again sometime."

"Absolutely."


End file.
